


Pyrrhic

by 24bookworm68



Series: family matters [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Aromantic Bucky, Bisexual Female Character, Bisexual Male Character, Bucky is better than you, Canon Disabled Character, F/F, Gen, Holocaust, Implied Murder, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Jewish Bucky Barnes, Menstruation, One-Sided Attraction, Period Typical Attitudes, Queerplatonic Relationships, Trans Male Character, Trans Steve, also referenced briefly, and the fact that Steve is trans, i love Sarah Rogers this fic is all about Sarah Rogers, man i gotta get around to writing more about Miriam and Naomi remind me to do that, please accept ftm Steve Rogers into your heart, referenced briefly, so is Becca, so is Sarah
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-06
Updated: 2015-07-06
Packaged: 2018-04-07 22:20:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4280049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/24bookworm68/pseuds/24bookworm68
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a reason Steve pictures his ma when he thinks of heroes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pyrrhic

**Author's Note:**

> little late for Steve's birthday, but here it is.
> 
> mestruation reference is from "He's thirteen when" to "pants as is", if that squicks you for dysphoria or other reasons!!!
> 
> my next project is either:  
> -Pietro and Bucky's epic roadtrip  
> -Karen Page is Definitely A Black Widow  
> or  
> -Marvel Sense8 au
> 
> so if y'all wanna give me opinions on which to focus on, i'm listening.

His mother, bless her heart, named him Stella.

It wasn’t her fault, she didn’t know, fresh off a boat from her native Ireland to America, which she’d boarded chasing a man she’d married in the heat of battle. Her husband wasn’t what she’d always hoped, shellshocked and violent but he always came to her with soft hands after, soft words, _baby I didn’t mean it, angel I love you, honey forgive me_. And Sarah Kearney-now-Rogers, with steel in her spine, held her baby and spun in circles and made her plans.

( _Her son got his strategy, his mind, from his mother_.)

By the time he was five, his father had died, nominally from the delayed effects of mustard gas, and he was a little boy named Steve. His mother called him _Steven_  and _buachaill milis_  and _l_ _ittle man_  and neither of them doubted that he was just that, but his mother had him keep so many facts a secret, don't tell them you're different, don't give them excuses.

The year he started school was so many things, was the year he started fighting and the year both of them found the other most important person in their life, a lady named Helen Riley and a boy named Bucky-don't-call-me-James Barnes.

Bucky and Steve wormed their ways into each others' lives, slid together and mixed like paint, spent countless afternoons lying on the fire escape outside Steve's apartment reading comic books. Bucky has a smile like sunshine and a deep sympathy for the fact that Steve just can’t talk sometimes. They try to teach each other languages they won’t speak in public- Steve’s tongue fumbles over Yiddish but Bucky picks up Gaelige like a baseball in the street and Sarah pretends not to be relieved that she doesn’t have to speak English for his benefit.

Steve lives and he endures and he gets through the scarlet fever at age eight tired but with his head held high and he survives the rheumatic fever not long after the way you survive almost falling off a cliff: clinging to the edge with ragged, bloody fingernails and getting as much help as you can. When he can have visitors Bucky almost seems to materialize by his bedside, joking and telling stories and pretending his hands aren’t shaking that way they do when he’s scared but trying not to let anybody know. Steve isn’t stupid, so he sighs and tugs at those shaky hands until Bucky gives him a goddamn hug and admits “I thought you might be dying.”

Steve rolls his eyes and says “Like you could get rid of me that easy.”

Bucky laughs and laughs and laughs the way he did last year when he dragged his littlest sister away from a third story drop by the back of her dress and then needed to take a minute away from everyone. He worries too much, Steve knows it and his sister Becca knows it and Mr. and Mrs. Barnes know it even if they can’t always help- which isn’t their fault, they’re raising four kids and Steve knows as well as anything that people who started out somewhere else, like his ma, like Bucky’s dad, like Helen, get shortchanged a lot.

He worries but he doesn’t _fuss_  and Steve loves him for it, for the hand that grabs him by the neck and jostles, for the too-hard slaps on his back, for the fact that Bucky puts most of his weight on Steve when they hug, seems to forget that that’s double what Steve weighs soaking wet.

When he’s twelve he thinks, for a brief time, he could fall _in love_  with Bucky, but he stomps it down so hard he leaves himself breathless. It’s just as well, he figures out over the years, because Bucky’s standard response to flat-out flirting from _anyone_ , girls at school or boys when nobody's watching, is this rippling shudder in his shoulders and a tight smile that Steve always knows is fake. It’s just as well, because Steve never wants to make Bucky uncomfortable like that. He is his friend’s safe space, and vice versa.

( _Becca Barnes, who has known him since he was five and known Bucky since he was just a thought, notices even through the walls she’s thrown up lately, through the eyes that remind Steve of his ma’s on bad days, and she squeezes his arm while they watch Bucky try to teach Miriam how to dance_.)

( _"_ _You’re too tall!” she complains, and Steve gets dragged in somehow, and then she says that he’s got two left feet and somehow it turns into Bucky having to teach_ Steve _how to dance and Steve thinks, trying to hear the music through his best friend’s complaints that his feet are being stepped on, that there’s not a damn thing he’d risk this for._ )

He’s thirteen when the big secret, the one nobody but his mother and Helen know, comes out in the worst way- he knows most people who have to deal with this get a sense of when it’s going to happen, his ma and Helen do, count down the days before they’re repeating their ritual of sitting on the couch and bringing each other hot water bottles when they aren’t working, and he doesn’t know how either of them _work_  because the nausea and headaches are bad enough without the cramps on top, _ugh_.

But anyway, the all of two times it’s happened it’s taken him by surprise because it’s so damn irregular, but he’s been lucky enough to notice first thing in the morning before, lucky enough to not end up _stranded_  at Bucky’s place with no idea how he’s gonna handle this without them all finding out.

He feels his lungs locking up anxiously, so it’s convincing when he steps back out of the bathroom and whispers “I think I need to go home?”

There’s a little flash of guilt in his chest for the way Bucky goes from smiling to worried in an instant, how he practically jumps to his feet to find Steve’s coat. Steve stares at the floor while he ties his shoes. Bucky settles his oversized coat on his shoulders and runs a strong, graceful hand through his hair- not the gentle way his ma does, it’s a hard brush and he can _feel_  that his hair’s standing in five different directions- he shoots Bucky a look that promises retribution, gets a bright laugh in return. It almost makes the day not suck.

And then, of course, _so close_  to home and being able to forget about it all, Bucky says- in a tone of panicked dread -” _Hell_ , you’re bleeding.”

It’s one of the least fun conversations he’s ever had to avoid. He hears his mom explaining, while he’s changing in the second room, and he _hates_  this, hates that he’s got the wrong stupid body and now his best friend is going to hate him forever.

Also, blood is terrible to get out of clothes and he only has two pairs of pants as is.

 _Ugh_.

He creeps back out into the main room, can’t quite bring himself to look at Bucky as he says, “Just. Just don’t _tell_  anyone, _please_ -”

“What?” Steve risks a glance at his face- he looks confused, face doing that particular _what are you even talking about, Rogers_  expression. “Why would I do that? S’pretty rude, telling everybody your best friend’s secrets.”

Steve’s throat closes on any words he might have had to say. Bucky’s tone is flippant but his face is not, all tilted-up chin and stubbornness, the look he gets when Steve tells him he doesn’t need help. After a long beat, Bucky grumbles,“You’re still the same reckless punk I’ve been chasing around the last eight years, you moron.”

He wouldn’t risk what they have for a _single damn thing_.

Things change shockingly little. Steve expected the world to shift on its axis when it all came out, but all that really happens is that his best friend starts being someone who helps him keep his secret rather than someone he has to keep it from.

Everything would be great, except Helen dies that summer, right after he turns fourteen and god, the anguished noise that comes out of his ma’s mouth is one he never wants to hear again. She looks pale and sick, wanders around the apartment like she’s in a fog for a few days. And then a couple of her and Helen’s mutual friends come to the door, and Steve can watch her spine straighten. “This happened,” she says, with dignity and without a wobble to her voice, “because they are all _afraid_  of what we can accomplish,” and the other ladies, red-eyed but determined, nod solemnly. Sarah nods back and then turns to Steve, runs her fingers through his hair and kisses his forehead- for an instant he smells rotting fruit and lipstick, and then she’s walking out the door with her head held high.

There’s a _reason_  Steve pictures his ma when he thinks of heroes.

When she dies three years and change later, he sheds all of his tears in private and stands as straight and as tall as his crooked spine will let him at the cemetery. She always told him to be brave, to fight back, and to stand by his principles.

He tries damn hard to go it alone, but all it takes is one _”I’m with you to the end of the line, pal”_  to make him give in… Bucky’s help barely counts as charity anyway, as much as his legs holding him up is charity. A little more reliable, though.

The next universe-shaking blow comes in the form of a draft letter, of Bucky’s voice shaking almost as bad as his hands, “I don’t want this I don’t want this I don’t _want_ this.”

In front of his sisters, who have been on unsteady ground since their parents died, he is all smiles and laughter and strength, but Steve knows better. He pretends he doesn’t hear Becca tell her brother, in an urgent voice, not to put an H on his dog tags. They all heard Mr. Barnes’s horror stories, why he left Europe, and they’re all hearing the stories of what’s going on over there now.

Bucky doesn’t say anything, but Steve and Becca both know that he’s not going to listen- he’s never been particularly religious, but he’s proud of who he is and he’s almost as stubborn as Steve.

Becca looks like she wants to say more, but then Naomi bustles back in chattering about her upcoming wedding and Bucky protests that she’s too young to get married and she tells him to keep his nose out of her business _J_ _ames_  and the banter is familiar and it almost makes them all forget how messed up everything is, forget all the missing voices, forget that none of them feels old enough to carry all the weight on their shoulders.

The next morning finds Steve at the closest enlistment office getting the first of a few rejections. Bucky yells at him so long that his voice gives out and he’s reduced to pulling at his hair and pacing the apartment. Steve doesn’t bother pointing out that it’s a moot point because he didn’t get in anyway, they both know he’ll keep trying until it works.

And he does.

And it does.

He’s worried, at first, about the serum- _he_  knows he isn’t a girl, and even if he was he’s always been too sickly to develop much, but what if, what _if_.

It turns out to be a non-issue. As Erskine said, the serum amplifies everything that’s inside. ( _I_ _t takes him a while, after, to let himself think about Erskine_.)

In one of the quiet moments, before a show where he has to parade around in the stupid outfit and listen to the song- _which keeps getting stuck in his head, goddammit_  -he brushes his hair out of his face and looks at himself in the mirror, healthy and strong enough to fight his own bullies. He thinks about lipstick and rotting fruit and a thin, graceful hand on his cheek.

He picks up the prop shield and mumbles, “Look at me now, ma,” and for a second even being trapped in the propaganda circuit feels like something close to a victory.

 


End file.
